by Martha Adele
No one other than me is in the room, which allows me to do the task I came for. I walk up and down the aisles of file cabinets and find a whole section marked “Burris.” There seems to be a drawer for each month that Frieden has been a nation.
I slide open the drawer for last month and look through the names of the files. There are large files with the week dates on the tab, smaller files with each of our names, and even smaller files within our names with the jobs we were assigned to do. My finger runs across “Rhodes, Werner” first, but slowly finds its way to “Mcaninch, Ruth.” I take my time and consider what I am about to do. In order for Mac to have found out that we are taking and torturing people, she would have had to be there, right?
She would have had to be assigned something along those lines, right?
Would she have done it? Did she do it?
The sound of footsteps entering the room forces me to close the drawer as quickly as possible without retrieving any of the files. I am immediately greeted with a familiar melodious voice that has never been so threatening.
After bouncing off the metal cabinets and walls, Chancellor Thomas Oswald’s voice meets my ears. “Hello …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Werner
After a moment of silence between us, Oswald looks around the room and slides his hands into his suit pockets. “Not to be rude or anything, but what exactly are you doing?”
If I say I am retrieving files, and he asks for my code, I will be caught. If I make up a story and he asks for my code, I will be caught. I play this the only real way I know how.
“You”—I clear my throat and force myself into a giddy manner—“you’re Chancellor Thomas Oswald!”
A small and embarrassed smile rises on his face. “I am.”
“I am a huge supporter. Thank you so much for everything you do for us!”
He clears his throat and blushes. “Well, thank you, but it’s not just me. It is the entire staff and faculty. We … we all have a part in it.”
“But you,” I continue to slowly shift around him toward the door, “you are the man who makes it happen. On behalf of me and all of Frieden, thank you.”
Oswald chuckles and rubs the back of his head as if he is more embarrassed and surprised by my reaction than he can handle. “Please, I am just doing my job.”
I nod. “Me too.” I look down to my watch and back to him. “Speaking of which, I actually have to go.” Before he can say anything, I rush over to him and shake his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Chancellor Oswald.”
He releases my hand and smiles at me as I exit the room. “You too.”
Quickly, I weave through the halls and head out of the building without another interaction.
Mavis
I run my hands through my hair, trying to push it out of my face as I force myself onto my feet in the bathroom stall. The constant nauseous feeling in my stomach has found its way into my head. The last few weeks haven’t been bad, but the stomach bug has now hit me full swing. I am not throwing up as much as I feel I need to. The nausea comes in waves and picks and chooses when it wants to force food out of me.
When Bram asked me if I was okay, I told him how I felt. He reassured me that it is just a stomach bug.
“I felt sick my first few days here,” Bram told me. “You probably caught what I had.”
I choose to believe his statement and exit the restroom. When I get back to the training room, I notice that only one other person is in here; and he is fighting one of the training bots. I follow his lead and stand back in front of the training dummy I had just left and reset it to easy. Its eyes light up green, and we begin. The man-shaped bot and I circle around each other on the mat, never breaking eye contact. Within seconds, it leaps forward, throwing a punch at my head. I dodge and give it a swift kick to the side.
The lifelike machine grabs its side as if my kick actually hurt and attempts to regain its balance. Before it gets the chance, I end the fighting session with one punch to the jaw of the machine, causing it to fall onto its side.
The machine resets, and its eyes change to yellow. It is now on its medium setting.
I fight it, this time with more effort, and realize how tired I really am. I have felt worse this last week than any other week of my life. I have been hungrier than I ever have been before, wanting to eat everything in sight while never getting any energy from the food I do eat. Because of how much I have been exercising and training lately, I have allowed myself to eat the large amounts of food I want. Nonetheless, my body now holds more fat and muscle than it ever has before.
The bot throws a punch at my head. I dodge and grab its arm. Before I get the chance to react, its arm twists, grabs mine, and throws me onto the ground. My legs immediately fly upward, and I wrap them around its head. Its arms reach up and grab my thighs, but I swing it to the ground before it can force itself free. I reach down and use my body weight to make one quick jolt and snap the bot’s neck.
My body relaxes as I shift my weight back and sit on the bot’s stomach. The machine becomes limp, and the lights in the eyes die out. I reach down to press the button on the bot’s neck to have it return to the starting position but accidentally press something else.
Its eyes light up red, and its body jerks to life, throwing me off. I lie there and watch as the bot launches itself onto my body.
“Off!” I shout at it before it gets the chance to hit me again. The eyes die out, and the machine rises to its feet. It freezes in a standing position and turns off, leaving me on the ground to lie and take a few deep breaths.
I need to continue training.
But I am so tired I don’t even want to get up.
The man in the corner of the room looks to me for a split second before he continues fighting his bot as if nothing is wrong. A feeling of relief floods over me as I realize this won’t be made into a big deal.
“Mavis?” Grayson comes into the room and rushes over to me, causing the relief to be short lived. “Are you okay?”
I immediately force myself off the ground. “Yeah, I was just taking a break.”
“On the ground?”
I nod.
Grayson scans me up and down before returning my nod. “Okay.”
I try to wait until most everybody has left this training room before I use it. When shooting, I don’t care who watches because they are all focused on their own targets. But when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, there are only three bots in the room for people to use. Everyone else will be watching us. I’d rather not have anyone see me try to fight a bot while also trying not to throw up.
I nod to him again, this time much more rushed and awkward as I run out of the room.
“Mavis,” he calls out to me again, “what’s wrong?”
My voice bounces off the walls as I quickly exit the room and run to the restroom. “Stomach bug,” I answer.
Logan
“Who gets the chessboard?” Eric asks me, folding up one of the last boxes for his move. “It was a gift from Young, so that means it was both of ours, right?”
“Yes, but”—I step in front of the game with my arms crossed—“it was a gift that came with the house.”
Eric snorts at my defense, “What are you trying to say?”
“It came with the house, so it stays with the house,” I tell him jokingly.
“Ah, well, if we are going by that logic, doesn’t that mean I get it since you get the house?”
I roll my eyes. “You’re getting the new fancy job, and you want the chessboard? Who do you think you are?”
He shrugs. “The better chess player.”
“Exactly. That means I need to keep it so that I can practice.”
Eric grabs his box and walks over to set it on the table. “Valid point.” He looks to me and rests his elbow on the box. “How about this, joint cust
ody?”
I can’t help but laugh at Eric’s suggestion. It sounds exactly like something Sam would say. My immediate response is to say, “Okay, Sam” in a joking manner; but I can’t seem to do it. It hurts too much. If Sam was still with us, I would have said it, but now that he’s gone?
“Are you okay?” Eric removes his elbow from the box and looks at my face, which accidentally dropped back into a blank expression.
I nod. “I’m okay. Do you need any more help?”
“No. All my boxes are ready. The movers will be here in the morning.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in a bit then.” I make my way over to the door and point to the chessboard. “That better be out on the table when I get back.”
Eric nods. “Ready to lose one last time before I go?”
“You bet.”
With those words, I exit the house. My lower back continues to remain sore. The sharp pain aches with every step I take. It feels as if each individual vertebra is grinding against one another as I move.
I brush off the pain and continue to walk. The afternoon heat steadily becomes more apparent the longer I stroll up the road. When I finally make it to the house overgrown with the flowers, I take a moment to enjoy the shade provided by the trees surrounding the land. The spring breeze blows the hair out of my face and the sweet scent of the flowers into my nose. Just as I squat down to grab a few that hang out into the road, the door of the small house squeaks open.
“Well, well, I finally get to meet the flower thief.”
I look up to see an older lady with long white hair tied back in a low ponytail. Her glasses make her squinted eyes look much larger than they are, and her age doesn’t seem to slow her agility one bit. She makes her way down her brick stairs and over to me, revealing how short she really is.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” She smiles at me as I drop one of the flowers in my hand. “I see you at least twice a week taking some of my flowers.” She bends over and grabs the blue-and-yellow plant that I dropped and sticks it back into my small bouquet. “I think it’s time for me to meet this girl of yours. I need to see if she is worth all this trouble you go through to steal my babies.” The woman winks at me as she hobbles up the road. “Come along, dear. You always go this direction after taking them, but I don’t know the way.”
I look down to the mixture of flowers in my hands and speed up, trying to match the woman’s pace. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know if anyone lived there, and I only ever took the ones dangling off into the street.”
She waves it off. “Oh, it’s fine. At first I was a little upset, but then when I saw you hold your back and squat down to grab them, I figured they had to be for something important. Or else, you wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble.”
“Well, I mean—”
“And the fact that you come by so often makes me think she is really special.” The woman stops in her tracks and looks to me. “Oh! I’m sorry. I forgot to introduce myself.” She extends her hand to me, and we shake. “My name is Evelyn Zook.”
“Logan Forge. It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Zook.”
We continue walking, and she chuckles. “So what’s the story behind you and the flowers? What made you want to take them?”
I can’t help but remain silent. What am I supposed to tell her? She seems so happy about me and the “special girl.” Am I supposed to just drop the depressing news on her that they are for my dead friend who was supposedly murdered by the only girl I have ever really found myself infatuated with?
“Ah”—she chuckles again—“embarrassed, are we? That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.” She looks at me and smiles. “I’m going to follow you anyways. I will just see what’s what then.”
I continue to remain silent. We walk for a few minutes, only listening to the sounds around us before Ms. Zook speaks up again, “So tell me about yourself, Logan.”
I shrug. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your family.”
We continue and make our way to the top of a hill, revealing the cemetery about a mile away. “The only living family I really have as of right now is my roommate, Eric. He and I have been through a lot together, and even though we aren’t really siblings, we are brothers, you know?”
“Ah, yes.” She smiles at the thought. “I understand. How long have you two known each other?”
“Less than a year. Our time together is about up actually. He just got a job in State Two. He’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Aw, that’s too bad, Logan. What will he be doing?”
“He’s going to be a fisherman. It’s his dream job, so him moving isn’t a bad thing.”
She smiles again but slowly allows it to die out. “These flowers aren’t for your girlfriend, are they?”
I shake my head as we continue approaching the cemetery. “No, ma’am.”
She nods. “Who are they for?”
“A friend of mine. He died a few weeks ago.”
“What happened?”
I take a moment to think about how to answer and realize this woman has made me more comfortable in her presence than I have been in anyone’s since Mavis’s and Sam’s. “You want the full story? Or the quick and painless one?”
She shrugs. “I like stories, and I have the time, but only tell me if you are okay with it.”
“I’m okay with it. I just hope you will be. It’s kind of a lot.”
Ms. Zook smiles at me and nods as we make our way into the cemetery. I start the tale of our story when we were first exiled from Bestellen. I tell her about us meeting, about our disorders, about the Taai, about Sam and Uri, the guy who beat him up, about Mavis and her family, about the Page family, about Eric and I and the explosions, about us settling in with the new chancellor, about the ball, about Sam’s mom, and then about Sam’s death and Mavis’s disappearance.
Throughout the entire story, she remains silent, not commenting on anything but staring at Sam’s clear gravestone. I would glance around the cemetery to see a person walking every now and then; but other than that, it has been pretty lifeless.
And now I’m here, standing in the cemetery, telling a woman I barely know my troubles. I turn to look to her, but she continues staring at Sam’s grave. “I’m sorry for all that. I’m sorry about stealing your flowers too.”
Ms. Zook, after a few more moments of staring, turns to me and holds up her finger. “I want to take you somewhere.” She immediately turns around and begins walking out of the cemetery. “Come on.”
I look around to see the sun glowing through all the different-colored headstones and decide to listen to the woman. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. It’s my favorite spot in all of Kern.”
We hike for what feels like miles through trees and down a small dirt path, lined with large stones, luscious green grass, and wildflowers. We walk until through the trees; I see a large lake, surrounded by the dirt path and a few wooden benches. Ms. Zook walks over to the sandy shores of the lake and stands in the saturated mud. Placing her hands on her hips, she proudly gazes out into the lake and looks around to see the gorgeous cabins on the other side. “Welcome to Grand Lake.”
She steps out of the mud and heads over to the nearest bench. Just before taking a seat, she bends over and picks up a smooth stone. “Have you ever skipped one of these before, Logan?”
I shake my head and pick up one of the other stones on the ground.
Ms. Zook snickers at me, takes the rock out of my hand, and replaces it with the one in hers. “You need a large and flat one, honey.” She lays it out in the palm of my hand, showing me the stone is nearly as large around as my palm but almost as flat too.
She picks up another stone and shows me how to force it to skim across the water. “Twist back like this and shoot.”
Her rock bounces off o
f the water twice and falls to the lake’s floor.
“Let me try that again.” She chuckles. picking up another stone. This time, it skips three times and seems to make a smile grow on her face. “Your turn.”
As Ms. Zook sits down on the bench, she watches me twist and throw. I watch the rock skip once and then sink. I bend over to pick up another rock and feel a sharp pain in my spine, causing me to let out a grunt of pain.
“Are you okay?” Ms. Zook rises to her feet and rushes back over to me.
“I’m fine,” I slowly rise up and make my way over to the bench with her.
“Are you sure?”
I nod as she sits beside me. “Thank you, though.”
“Okay. I’m just making sure. With what all you’ve told me, you don’t need anything else going wrong.”
I shrug, not knowing what to say. We sit in silence and watch the birds fly overhead, listen to their songs, and let the lake’s aroma meet our noses. The fresh breeze cools us off from the walk and somehow refreshes my energy.
“So what do you think”—she clears her throat and looks back out to the lake—“about your friend’s death. Do you think Mavis did it?”
I watch the sunlight shimmer across the top of the lake and sit quietly, enjoying the sun’s warmth. “I don’t. But what do I know? According to Derek, she was fully capable of murdering someone.”
She nods.
“And, I mean, I did just find out about her past. It’s not like I knew everything about her.”
Ms. Zook pats me on the leg. “I’m sorry, Logan. I’m sorry about Sam, I’m sorry about Mavis, and I’m sorry about Eric.”
I titter at the thought. I had no idea things were taking this much of a turn in my life. “At least I have you, Ms. Zook.”
She gives me another smile. “I’m glad. I enjoy your company, Logan.”